Information Technology Solutions

Cisco Catalyst 3550 series

Today, I received my first networking equipment: a Cisco L3 Switch. Here are some pictures of me unboxing.

Figure 1: Well done packaging of Network device

Figure 2: Minor wear on surface but does it work?

I bought this L3 switch through eBay for the low cost of $40. Good price in my opinion for a switch with 48 ports and can do routing protocols. Next set of photos are to show the inputs and outputs.

Figure 3: Front side

Figure 4: Back side

Now, it’s time to test it out and make sure I got my money’s worth. After powering up the device, I was startled with the sound of a roaring fan. You’d expect these things to be a bit quieter. In my opinion, the device passed the Power-on-Test. Check out the picture below to verify my belief.

Figure 5: Systems are a go!

Next, I will be trying to get into the command line interface of this machine. The method I chose for getting into the CLI is telnet. I had to reset the switch because it already had some configuration rules. With the switch cleared of outdated configurations, I was able to use Express mode to configure the basic requirements to telnet. Here are the commands I used:

Switch# show running-config (To check the IP address)

Switch# config t

Switch(config)# lime vty 0 4

Switch(config-line)# transport input telnet

Switch(config-line)# password $&@!

Switch(config-line)# login

Switch(config-line)# exit

Figure 6: Finally received telnet access

This was just one step toward my journey. I have my other routers, switch, and ASA firewall ready to put on the network.